The floods in Pakistan show our vulnerability to climate chaos

Flood survivors fight for bags of flour during relief distribution on the outskirts of Muzaffargarh in Punjab, Pakistan. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

After the massive floods hit Pakistan this summer, international attention was drawn to the damaging effects of climate change in the region. The "tsunami from the sky" caused by unprecedented monsoon rainfall in late July made the rivers swell and burst their banks. Villagers barely had time to escape from their homes – there was no early warning system in place.

Pakistan

Pakistan's geography is marked by everything from plains and deserts to forests and mountain ranges, and everything from earthquakes and landslides to severe flooding

Percentage of population in rural areas
63%

CO2 emissions per capita
0.90 tons

Percentage of land covered by forests
2.5%

Percentage of population with cell phones
49.7%

Percentage of population with internet access
10.5%

Number of threatened species
99

Percent of population living below the national poverty line
22.3

Statistics from the Asian Development Bank, UN-Stats and the World Development Indicators

I interviewed a flood victim from Nowshera, one of the worst-hit districts, near the River Kabul, who told me that within an hour, the water had reached up to her neck as she waded out of her neighbourhood, carrying one of her grandchildren on her shoulders.

Just before the deluge, everyone in the country was complaining about water shortages as lakes dried up and groundwater levels receded. Then came the torrential rainfall and it caught everyone by surprise. At one point, approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was submerged. Over a million homes were flooded, more than 2,000 people were killed and up to 4 million were left homeless.

The nation's worst natural calamity has ruined roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications. The floods have damaged standing crops as well as stored grain and seeds for planting. Pakistan's agriculture industry – a pillar of the economy – could take up to two years to start recovering.

The widespread destruction in the country, from the mountains to the coastline, shows our extreme vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Last month the One UN Joint Programme on Environment based in Islamabad, which supports Pakistan in fulfilling its international obligations towards environmental treaties and agreements, decided to organise a large international climate change conference in Islamabad - the International Conference on Climate Change and Development. Various experts were invited to speak, including Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

As the keynote speaker, he called for greater cooperation between Pakistan and India when it comes to managing our joint water resources (the Indus river system). He pointed out that our "culture and history has shown us that we can harmonise our actions in consonance with nature". He also explained that we were both blessed with the bounty of renewable energy (solar, wind, water, bio-gas), and that we could have "higher energy security and agricultural productivity with negative cost options".

The last speaker at the inaugural session was the prime minister of Pakistan, Syed Yusuf Reza Gillani, who explained Pakistan's increasing vulnerability to climate change and stressed the need for an equitable and legally binding international treaty to curb carbon emissions, which are causing global warming.

After the inaugural session, there were several technical sessions which lasted two days and covered issues like climate monitoring, adaptation challenges, climate change negotiations, protection of forests, financing technology and water, food and energy security.

What really came out of the conference was the urgent need for a bottom-up strategy to fulfil climate protection needs, such as bilateral cooperation between countries and institutions instead of merely waiting around for the UNFCCC process to show results. These have to consider development options and needs for the large developing and emerging nations and have to reconcile adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development pathways.

In a concluding statement to the conference, Prof Dr JP Kropp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: "The fairy tale that enough money for adaptation could fulfil development and climate protection goals in parallel is not true. Development is needed and threatened by climate change, but the money for development is needed in addition. It should not relabelled to climate related adaptation issues. This is increasingly done, due to the popular misunderstanding that development per se will lead to a better climate. This is also not true, in particular not for sustainable development. To keep the [global temperature increase] to 2C we need much more ambitious efforts. Simply, a transition of our consumption styles and economic systems is needed".

I wholeheartedly agree with Kropp that our current development pathways are non-sustainable. Much more efforts are needed to develop really sustainable transitions and adequate financial instruments have to be set into force. Countries like Pakistan need support to build up their own capacity to perform integrated impact analyses. According to Kropp, "Comparable and standardised impact and vulnerability analyses are the basis for suitable and efficient mitigation and adaptation policies".

Pakistan is already challenging the definition of vulnerability at the UN Climate Change talks and wants monsoon variability to be included in the new definition. In Kiribati, Pakistan ought to emphasise its increasing vulnerability to climate change and ask for the support that it needs. In the mean time back at home, more awareness raising is needed because people, policy makers and stakeholders still need to be convinced. They need to recognise the individual benefits of an ambitious climate policy.